March UserCons and VMUG Meetings

For the Runecast Team, this March has been packed with events from all over the World. In less than two weeks our engineers traveled to three different continents.

First up, we attended the first ever NYC VMUG meeting. The innovative style of the event was epitomized by Stanimir Markov joining our CTO, Aylin Sali, from our office in the Czech Republic for a live broadcast.

Next up was the Netherlands NL VMUG UserCon - the King of all UserCons! Traditionally, the Dutch UserCon attracts a broad and deep range of professionals from across Europe. It was a real privilege to gain so many positive reactions from those who’d never heard of Runecast Analyzer before.

Simultaneously, but on the other side of the planet, Ched Smokovic was presenting Runecast Analyzer at Sydney and Melbourne VMUG UserCons. The Australian community has always been highly active and engaging; each session invariably ends with many deep technical questions. This might well be the reason VMware Chief Technologist, Cormac Hogan, paid a visit to the Runecast session in Sydney.

To top it all off, Runecast was featured at the UserCon in Japan. Even though we were not physically present at the event, it is a true honour to see your product being praised in one of the most demanding markets in the world.

What questions we heard the most during the events?

Are you going to support NSX?

Yes, we are actively working on support for NSX-V and we are close to beta. Whoever is interested may sign up for the NSX beta by contacting our product management team: michal.hrncirik@runecast.biz

How are updates provided?

Runecast Analyzer has split product functionality and knowledge base updates. Knowledge base updates are applied automatically and frequently (even on daily basis) where internet access is available, or via a lightweight 10MB file transfer to the Analyzer if an online connection is not present.

Can you do auto-remediation of detected issues?

Since many issues are mitigated by applying patches, we do not want Runecast to be patch manager, but we thinking of integration with VMware patch manager to schedule the right patch job automatically. For the other cases which can be fixed by scripts/config change, we can do it, but we are collecting information from users and potential users, what type of automation would be useful for them. If you have your thoughts, share it with us.

How is the product licensed?

Runecast Analyzer is licensed per each ESXi host CPU (socket). For the exact price, ask for your quote.

Can I customize which rules are evaluated in my environment?

Yes, you can, the Analyzer has a sophisticated filtering feature where it is very useful to customize which rules on which objects should be ignored to avoid any false-positives. You can setup multiple complex filters to customize and tailor the analysis to your specific requirements.

Will you introduce historical reporting on issue data?

Even though the data can be exported to PDF or XLS files after each scan to keep history data, we are actively working on an improvement of historical data where users will have a simple view on issue trends over time.

We are planning to visit several more events this year before the VMworlds, so stay tuned!